One Heck Of A Ride

39 Everyone’s Deer From left: Ingrid Poole, author, Larry Higgins, Cindy Higgins, and Bill Poole in Redpine’s dining room acre hunting estate began as a farm purchased by his family in 1928. In recent years, Michigan has allowed landowners who high-fence their properties to buy the deer captured in their enclosure and set their own seasons and hunting regulations for their animals, and that’s what he and Cindy did. As their herd grew, his staff began taking accurate inventories of the sex, age, and trophy potential of their deer and culling to avoid overpopulation, remove unwanted genes, and maintain an optimum buck-to-doe ratio. Inside their square-mile property were meadows with cedar swamps, dense and open stands of pines, and ridges with hardwoods. I had arrived at the peak of the fall color show and the maples were absolutely gorgeous. Unlike some hunting estates, there were no permanent elevated blinds. The two blinds I hunted from that afternoon were older ground blinds, but obviously adequate because I shot two bucks from them on the second day of my hunt. The first was a trophy ten-pointer that scored 175 1/8 SCI; the second was an eight- point management buck. I was fascinated with its extremely tall eyeguards that curved inward and almost touched each other. I had trouble selecting the ten-pointer I shot because there were five other trophy bucks in view at the same time. We also saw a beautiful twelve- pointer with long typical tines and a few small non-typical “kickers.” Joel Noeske, my guide, said that buck was being saved for someone else. The estate’s skinning and meat-processing area was the cleanest I’ve ever seen. Joel said every edible ounce that I did not take home with me would be donated to charities. After my hunt, Larry drove me south to meet my friends Dan and Bev Bodary, who met us about half way to their home on Duck Lake. Bev’s brother was a chef, and I took him some prime cuts of venison that he cooked for all of us. After three days with the Bodarys, I returned to Lompoc. On my flights home I asked myself whether I had hunted or merely collected my two bucks at Redpine, and I had to admit it wasn’t hunting in the true sense of the word. Would I do it again? Yes. I’d had a great time being among so many mature deer. I’d also enjoyed visiting and sharing meals and stories with Bill and Ingrid, and seeing how Larry and Cindy had transformed their eighty-year-old farm into a successful hunting estate. Trophy Northeastern whitetail was one of two bucks taken in 2008 on Redpine Whitetails Ranch in Michigan